Arif Masood Naqvi is the founder and group chief executive of The Abraaj Group, a private equity investor operating in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East, Turkey and Central Asia. Naqvi founded the Group in 2002. It started with 60 million USD in assets under management and as of 2016, manages 10 billion USD.

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Arif Naqvi began his career with Arthur Andersen in London and American Express in Karachi. In the early 1990s, he joined the Olayan Group in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom’s largest trading company. In 1994 he started an investment firm in Dubai called Cupola with $50,000 of his own savings. In 1999, Naqvi purchased Inchcape Middle East, for $102 million, with $4.1 million in equity, making it the MENA region’s first leveraged buyout. Naqvi then sold off pieces of the company for a total of $173 million

In 2002, Naqvi founded Abraaj Capital, and in 2012 the company merged with Aureos Capital to become The Abraaj Group.

In 2014, Interpol Foundation for a Safer World appointed Naqvi to its Global Board of Trustees. In this role, Naqvi will lead the I-CHECKIT initiative, one of the Foundation’s five global initiatives, aimed at protecting industries vulnerable to the threat of identity fraud, such as airlines, hotels, passenger shipping companies, banks and financial institutions.

In 2015, Naqvi was awarded with the BNP Paribas Grand Prix for Individual Philanthropy by BNP Paribas. In 2014, Arif Naqvi received the High-Impact Entrepreneur of the Year from Endeavor Global. He was also a recipient of the Kennedy Centre’s Gold Medal in the Arts award.

Naqvi has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Oslo Business for Peace Award from The Business for Peace Foundation, the highest form of recognition given to individual businessmen for fostering peace and stability.